People are drawn to golf for a number of reasons. For example, many people innately enjoy challenges of personal skill. But unlike more intensive sports like weightlifting or basketball, golf is more inclusive. People of all ages can play, and golf does not require any particular trait such as extreme muscle mass or height. Every golfer has some chance of making a hole in one and sooner or later, most golfers do. Golf is attractive because players get to spend time outdoors, in beautiful locales. The fact that golf is one of the professional sports in which every playing field is unique adds to its appeal. Players can seek out new and diverse environments in which to play. People like golf because it is a prestigious sport. Anyone can play. Every player at least occasionally makes a great shot. But winning a tournament shows that a golfer has excelled at his or her game and mastered the sport. Perhaps the overriding reason that people are drawn to golf is the opportunity to demonstrate mastery, the chance to excel.
To excel at golf, one must consistently hit well. One must be able to make long drives towards the green, for example. From the tee box, a golfer would like to get the ball way down the fairway, close to or even onto the green without going out into the rough. To achieve such performance, the golfer needs golf clubs such as a driver that hits the ball a great distance and is forgiving with off-center hits. Unfortunately, designing a golf club involves engineering tradeoffs between distance and forgiveness.
One approach to making a golf club head forgiving to off-center hits involves increasing the club head's moment of inertia about a vertical axis. This is done by placing as much mass of the club head as possible far out towards the outer edges of the heel, toe, and aft areas of the club head. This type of mass distribution means that portions of the crown and sole and other key structural areas of the club head must be light weight, i.e., made with a minimal amount of mass. Such a construction may sacrifice durability of the club head. A good golfer may swing the driver such that the club head hits the ball while travelling at 100 miles per hour. Repeated hits with this much force may fatigue or crack fragile materials. As such, key portions of the crown and sole must be built durably, with thick and heavy materials, lest the golf club head crack and fail early in its life.